United Nature | The Intelligence of Ecosystem June 13, 2017 Kosmos Online

Dear Reader,

We are taught in our schools and churches that humans are the apex of creation, the most intelligent species on Earth. We tell stories, we build cities, we have split the atom. Yet, can we say that a hydrogen bomb is fundamentally superior to a spider’s web? Is any other species at war with itself?

The more time I spend in the forest – there is a wildlife preserve behind my home and a swift creek – the more attuned I become to the vast intelligence of Ecosystem. The sun filtering through the leaves generates food energy for every being – no discrimination. Nourishment passes through the food chain to us all. The great sentinel trees also devote their patient, solid existence to transforming harmful gasses into oxygen. One large tree can generate a day’s supply of oxygen for four people. Every day. How do my own contributions compare? Without photosynthesis, without the carbon cycle and other Earth cycles both subtle and vast, our reality evaporates like the dew. We are ‘in eco-community’ – perpetual interrelatedness, interbeing.

Other animals must see us as we are: powerful, capable of compassion, yet often cruel and neglectful members of our community. As you read the stories in this edition of Kosmos Online, ask yourself how we can all wake up together to the wonders and responsibilities our lifetime membership ‘in’ Earth warrants.

Today, enjoy your eco-community. Turn your face to the Sun, smile to a flower, touch a tree with reverence, be kind to a spider and to your pets. And don’t forget to love your own body, your cells – for they contain the plant and animal energy that nourished your ancestors and all of evolution. Might consciousness itself be imagined as an ecosystem, a community?

Unheard Invitations: Piercing the Veil Between Species

By Susan Eirich
Kosmos Journal, FALL | WINTER 2016

We can’t be reminded enough of how much beauty there is all around us—we who are so often too rushed or numbed or worried to see it and to feel the ease that it brings. In Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue wrote, “Beauty is made to seem naïve and romantic (but) much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. The Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity… we feel most alive in it’s presence for it meets the needs of our soul.”

Joanna Macy on ‘Waking Up Together’

Excerpted from an interview by Dahr Jamail, in Truthout

Jamail | What is called of us now, from the planet? What are we being called to do at this time?

Macy | To wake up together. That is actually the name of the movement in Sri Lanka that I went over to do field work with. Sarvodaya. Taking the Gandhian term, but using it in a slightly different way, but the same Sanskrit, which is “everybody wakes up together.”

Excerpt | The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet

by Jim Nollman, via Interpecies.com

This is an excerpt from a chapter of the book, The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet

“Animals are wise beyond the systems of language we impose upon them, intelligent beyond our training regimens, creative beyond the behavioral tricks we watch them perform. The most conscious forms of communication–Koko’s fib, for instance–are circular and transparent. While it is happening, both parties simply feel it and are thus able to respond intelligibly. Sentience can not be properly measured any more than creativity can be measured. Or love.”

The Consciousness of Plants | How They Teach and Heal Us

When I decided to join the Plant Consciousness event in London, I was still enjoying the traveling life in Peru. As I had slowed down to become more sensitive to the subtle life of nature, I was excited about these topics of consciousness, quantum physics, the amazing intelligence of the plant world and teacher plants such as Iboga and Ayahuasca.

Is There Still a Place for Zoos?

By Dave Neale, via AnimalsAsia.org

To answer the question as to whether or not zoos serve a purpose is very difficult. Every zoo is different. For instance, in many cases visiting a zoo in countries such as China and Vietnam can be a very negative educational experience, where the conditions in which the animals are being kept are unacceptable. I know that the majority of the visitors do not understand that those conditions cause animals to suffer, but all they learn from their visit is that it is acceptable to keep animals in such deplorable conditions.

The Sustainable Development Goals and Conscious Communication with Nature

“I have been associated with the UN since 1969 and had been intensively involved in the discussions leading to the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs). Once these had been agreed and before they were actually adopted, it became clear that of the three pillars, the environment, or Nature, was least understood. This threatened to become a serious obstacle to the implementation of the SDGs. For Nature, with the economy and society are the three pillars on which all of them rest. And of the three, Nature is primary.” – Lisinka Ulatowska